


A War of Different Sorts

by alteanfloofs



Series: The Rebel Leader Matt Holt fic that no one asked for [1]
Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Gen, OC's Galore - Freeform, Rebel Leader Matt Holt
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-03-21
Updated: 2017-05-29
Packaged: 2018-10-08 16:15:19
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 15,688
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10390752
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/alteanfloofs/pseuds/alteanfloofs
Summary: The Rebel Leader Matt Holt fic that no one asked for but was written anyways and edited while I was tired, on caffeine, or not fully functional.





	1. Work Shifts and Broken Legs

_ “I WANT BLOOD! Take care of your father.” _

Quickly losing consciousness, Matt had to admit that being dragged down the hall is slightly more pleasurable when you aren’t awake for it. Some time later, he gained consciousness for a few minutes, vaguely aware that he was strapped down to a table, two voices were arguing behind him.

“He won’t be good entertainment if he can’t walk.”

“He’s too  _ young  _ to be in a work camp.”

“He’s too  _ weak  _ to be in the Gladiatorial Unit, and I  _ will  _ call rank.”

**I’m going to a work camp. Shiro’s going to be alone, but I could find my father like he wanted me to.**

The next thing he remembers is being shoved through a door and straight into an alien. She whips around just in time to watch him collapse gracelessly to the floor, what a marvelous first impression.

“How’s the floor tasting down there?”

Matt grumbles, placing his forehead on the ground, mustering his strength before attempting to push his body off the floor. With endeavor and more groaning, he sits up, only for his efforts to go to waste when he tries to stand and his leg decides that it’s time to go on break. As his face connects with the floor for the second time, the alien standing over him offers a hand, laughing lightly. 

**Damned leg, just had to give out right after I fell on my face. Honestly, first I get abducted by aliens, then I get separated from Dad, then I lose Shiro, and now I lost my fucking leg, can’t I just catch a break for once?**

He takes her hand and after assuming a somewhat stable position, the two of them were left with the bunks closest to the door. A quick scan of the room confirms that his father wasn’t there, and he is the only human being present.

“My name’s Estrella, and as your leg looks like it’s going to be out of commission for a while, I’ll take the top bunk.” She smirks and guides Matt over to the bunks, doing her best not to let him fall. “Hope that feels better-” Estrella hesitates, searching for a name.

“Matt,” he cringes when his voice comes out gravelly and rough.

“So how did you end up in this hellhole, Matt? You don’t look to be from around here.” Her voice was brimming with sarcasm, but curious undertones bled through adding a genuine touch to her statement. 

“I’m from Earth, but we’re a long way from my galaxy. My species is rather… new to the concept of life from other planets and space travel, to say the least.” To say the least, meaning that he was one of the first people to leave their solar system and is now several billion light years away from his home.

“I’ve never heard of Earth, but I assume the Galra haven’t reached your planet if you’re new to the concept of other species. I’m from Pianeta, in the Klavier Star System. Although, I suppose my planet is being renamed now that the Galra have taken over, along with the rest of the Klavian Planets.” She pauses, shifting her gaze downwards with a melancholic sigh. “Either way, I believe we’re in the Telikinoski Star System. There’s six planets, all are Galra Bases, although the last I heard, Ata is abandoned.” 

Matt spoke softly, “To ensure that I’m thinking straight, the Galra are the people who are waging war on many planets and star systems, and everyone either doesn’t know about them, or they’re prisoners?”

“Pretty much, but I wouldn’t call them people,” Estrella rolled her eyes. “The Galra started making an empire 10,000 years ago under the rule of  _ King _ Zarkon. He has no regards for his own kind. If a Galra soldier dies, the empire becomes stronger because they were ‘too weak to live.’ Complete bull if you ask me. As of now, Zarkon is still leading the show. He has a sidekick, this druid Haggar, who has quite a bit of power. That’s why he’s lived for thousands of years needless to say.”

“How big is the empire exactly?” Matt asks weakly. Empires on Earth tend to be big, but this seems to be on a whole different level. If the Galra are taking over planets and collecting prisoners, it isn’t exactly comparable to Earth Empires.

“Eh, hard to say. When Pianeta was taken it was roughly 2,000 star systems, but that was-,” Another pause. **She doesn’t know how long ago Pianeta was taken, it’s probably been years since she last saw her home.** “However long ago it was, it’s expanded a lot since then.” There’s a sadness in her eyes, reasonable for the circumstances. “Anyways, if your Earth planet hasn’t been taken by the Galra, what are you doing here?”

Matt blinks, processing what she’s asking. “I, uh, I was abducted by the Galra? I mean, I was sent by my planet to another planet in my galaxy, or rather the moon of a dwarf planet orbiting our sun on a different orbital plane, Kerberos. It was the farthest humankind has ever traveled. It took months to get there. We were collecting ice samples to look for signs of extraterrestrial life. Just as we got our first ice sample, the Galra found us. I’m one of the first three people from my planet to leave the solar system. We never expected to find extraterrestrial life. I don’t know much of what happened, I was unconscious and I’ve probably had a few concussions since then. I remember being put in the Gladiatorial Unit and I was the first one to fight, but my best friend jumped in front of me before I made it into the arena and attacked me to take my place. He told me to go find my father, who was sent to a work camp. That’s how my leg got injured and why I’m here now.”

Estrella stares at him for a moment. “I didn’t realize how isolated your planet was.” She shifts her gaze to an alien with dark green skin and coiled black hair. “You can come over, Mondlicht. This is Matt. Mondlicht is from Bintang, also in the Klavier Star System. He doesn’t talk much, but he’s a good listener.”

As Mondlicht walked over, Matt notices white freckles splattered across his cheekbones and nose, but he couldn’t see well without his glasses.

“I’m sorry about your family.” 

Estrella snorts at that. “I’ve known him for how many years now and he talks to you the first second he’s invited over, in what way is that fair? I suppose we should introduce you to everyone else too. Over there on the back bunk is Bulan on top and Venere on the bottom.” She points to a woman (or an alien) with burgundy colored skin and long white hair. Her ears are long and stick out to a point. Venere has dark skin with yellow marks under both of his eyes. He has short white hair, sticking up in every direction and ears like Bulan’s. He looks several years younger than Matt, perhaps 15 or 16.

“You gonna introduce us to the new one, Estrella?” Bulan calls over mockingly.

“You bet your ass I will. That’s Bulan, she’s a complete dick and shouldn’t actually be here.” Estrella calls loudly. They squabble for a moment, reminding Matt of his relationship with Katie.  **They act like Katie and I used to, I wonder how long they’ve known each other.** Estrella looks back over to him, pausing as she sees the sadness on his face before continuing. “She’s a computer genius. Hacked into the system, took herself out of the Gladiatorial Unit and landed herself with us in a work camp. The Galra haven’t found out yet. She’d be washing out soon whether she wanted to or not.” Matt nodded slowly, his mind elsewhere.

Estrella lowered her voice, “Venere was a soldier, he’s from Giove in the Einfallen Star System. Giove is still a free planet, but he was sent to Callisto to fight against the Galra. Callisto was blown out of existence, as was Nettuno, Bulan’s home planet.” She glanced over at them for a moment before moving on. “Over there on the next bunk is Mahari on the top and Galassia on the bottom.”

Mahari looked like a Galra, but only with black hair and red skin. They briefly look at Matt before reverting back to staring at the wall. Galassia offers a small wave, which Matt returns gratefully. They have gray skin with a green tinge. Matt makes a mental note that Galassia kind of look like a human version of a rock. Their hair looks similar to their skin, only with a purple tinge. It looks like Galassia’s eyes are completely white and lacking a pupil, but Matt wouldn’t dare to ask if they could see.

Estrella leans into his ear and whispers, “Mahari doesn’t talk very much, we’re not sure of their past or where they’re from, but it doesn’t seem like a good topic.” She leans away and scans the room for who she’ll introduce next. “In the bunk across from us is Meigen, and usually that’s where Mondlicht is. Meigen is one of the youngest we’ve seen, but she’s strong. That’s why she’s here I suppose. She’s one of the newer ones here.”

Meigen smiles with a bereaved look. She has yellow skin with bright blue lines down her arms, and a few dots on her face around her eyes. It looks like she has four arms, but he very well could be concussed and seeing double. He grimaces as he becomes cognizant of a headache that’s been throbbing against his temples.

“Are you alright?” Matt jerks his head over to Mondlicht, who has spoken for the second time. Estrella scoffs and rolls her eyes before looking over at Matt, waiting for an answer.

“Fine,” he grits through his teeth. “Just a headache, maybe a minor concussion. Can’t see well, I need my glasses.” Mondlicht and Estrella share a look of concern before turning back to him.

“Get some rest, we have our first shift in about 30 dobashes.” Estrella moves off his bed, crawling up to her own bunk, and Mondlicht returning to his own bed.

**What the fuck is a dobash?**

Well, whatever a dobash is, the 30 of them passed fairly quickly, and so did the opportunity to sleep. Matt's eyelids were just growing heavy when one of the Galran soldiers that escorted them to their room opened the door.

"It is time to report to your first shift of work." Everyone silently formed a line. With his leg, Matt was the last person to make it to the line.

"What's taking so long?" the Galra barked, stomping his way to the end of the line.

"My leg is injured, I'm sorry, I'll be faster next time." Matt silently cursed his shaky voice, although he figured it might not be bad to sound frightened if it made the Galra think that he was more powerful, which wasn't a lie by any means.

Instead of using words to respond, the Galra slapped him across the face and walked back to the door. Everyone stood motionless; Matt didn't consider moving his hand to touch his face.

A second Galra soldier materialized in the doorway. There was a cart behind him with eight small boxes. As the boxes were handed down the line, the Galra who had slapped Matt began explaining, “These boxes contain your work uniform. It includes a helmet and a suit. Open the box now and get ready to leave. You have 50 ticks.”

**Yet another useless measurement of time, dobashes and ticks. Perhaps they’re like minutes and seconds. Hold on, are these clothes changing shape?**

The answer was yes, they were changing shape in order to fit his body. The helmet seemed to like glasses. He hoped he would be able to keep it between shifts so he could actually see.

Matt tried to memorize the way outside, it would be useful in trying to escape; if he could try to escape. With his leg, he wouldn't be able to try escaping several months if he's working a shift or two every day on it and trying not to limp. But after his leg is healed, he could possibly try to escape, so he tried to memorize the way despite his leg. It seemed fairly simple, take a left, take a right, get on the elevator going up seven or eight floors to ground level, take a left to the main corridor, follow that passing five crossing halls, then turning right, going straight for two decussating halls then make a left through a small command room and out the doors. **Except there are robots following a bunch of the Galra, many droid soldiers, visible and probably hidden cameras everywhere, and every door needs a Galra hand scan to be opened, plus the room door can only be opened from the outside.** He saw a few air shafts, maybe they would be big enough to be crawled through. Either way, his leg wouldn't allow. Limping through the hallways at a walking pace was arduous enough, going through fast enough to not get caught and having to fight off any droids and Galra in the process would be asking to be killed.

They were guided to the ship they would be unloading.

“Walk up this ramp, collect what you are told, carry it over there to the transportation vehicles, come back for your next load. Does everyone understand?” Everyone nodded. The Galra walked past them and the prisoners walked up the ramp to collect their first load.

While pushing the floating cart he was supposed to take, he caught up with Estrella. “What’s even in these things?”

She shrugs, “Probably supplies. Things for the food court, scraps of metal that they request.” 

“Woah wait a minute, do you have yellow on your skin?” Before he had the helmet he couldn’t see, but there were thin yellow lines like henna all over. It contrasted with the blue of her skin. Her ears were pointed like Venere’s and Bulan’s, but her hair was quite different. Fading from darker to lighter, it was purple, shaved on the right side and chin length on the left. Quite an interesting look.

“Yeah, you really couldn’t see in the barracks, could you? All Pianetians have a solid colored skin, and then thin patterned lines in whatever is the invert color of the original color. We’re shape-shifters, so we can be whatever reasonable height and body shape we like, and we can change the color of our skin and what our hair looks like. I guess you couldn’t see before, but everyone else’s hair is grown out and unkempt for the most part. Mine looks like I know how actually brush and wash it because I can change what it looks like.”

They reach the transportation vehicle, push their carts to the loader and begin walking back to the ship. Just before they reach the ramp, Bulan is coming down, but instead of boxes on a cart, she has a large tube with a yellow liquid in it. Estrella is given one, as is Matt.

“I feel like this isn’t food court supplies,” joked Matt, squinting his eyes suspiciously. 

“You’re right, it’s quintessence. Wonder what planet they drained this time.” Estrella gave the last line her usual sarcastic punch and eye roll.

“What do you mean drained?” He didn’t bother to ask what quintessence was, but he did wonder what it was used for.

“They drained a planet of its quintessence. The planet is dead now, its life force is in these tubes, ready to be converted to Galran energy.”

**So this yellow stuff is basically biological energy that planets have and can be taken and converted for personal use.**

“This is why they are invading so many planets then. Not because they need more bases, they need more energy.” The Galra’s motives were starting to make more sense, but it didn’t justify the way that they went about getting the necessary quintessence.

“That’s how it started. They also need space to colonize. Not as much space, but the original Galran star system has been completely drained of its quintessence. Every Galra living on those planets was sent in large space crafts following warships that destroyed populations of many planets. They started needing more energy and more bases to defend themselves from planets that fought back. And out of the blue, the Galra fell under the dictatorship of Zarkon and he decides he wants to create an empire. That’s why we’re here. We’re slaves being used for otiose work or entertainment. They have plenty of droids that could do our jobs, but Zarkon seems amused by slave labor.” Estrella’s sarcastic tone turned bitter, the rest of the shift was completed in silence.

After several more loads, the Galra that escorted them appeared by the ramp, stopping all the prisoners. 

“Your shift has ended. Each of you will follow me back into the building for meal time.”

Like clockwork everyone lined up; Matt managed to slip in line without being the last person. The path to the food court was even more simple than going back to the barrack, walking through the command room, straight passing five crossing hallways, left three crossings and into the doors.

The food court looked like the stereotypical prison cafeteria. Scattered tables, everyone wearing the same uniform (only black instead of orange), and a long line with revolting food slopped on plates sitting on trays. The Galra was nowhere to be seen, so the prisoners walked to the end of the line. Matt scanned the room for his father, but once again there was no such luck.  **Maybe his work shift is right now, or maybe I just missed him, I mean it’s really full in here and I’m not exactly tall compared to most of these aliens. Wait, is Shiro-**

“You looking for someone?” Estrella raised her eyebrow at Matt.

“Just my father. He was sent to a work camp, but I don’t know…” his voice trailed off as he began looking for Shiro.

“You can check to see if he’s supposed to be here now. There’s a list of prisoners and when they’re supposed to be here, if he’s at this base, he should be on the list.” Estrella pointed across the room to the door. Not seeing anything he slipped on his helmet, and a small screen came into view after a prisoner walked by. He quickly scanned the room with the helmet on before taking it off again.

“I’ll check once we get our food, not that it really matters. I can’t see him anywhere with or without the helmet and he might not even be on this planet anymore. Even if he is here if he isn’t in this meal shift I won’t be able to see him, will I?”

“I doubt it. They only have one barrack of prisoners for each job and any free time is spent in the barracks. There’s a chance you could see him in passing, but you wouldn’t be allowed to talk at all.”

He wasn’t on the list. Well, he was on  _ a  _ list, but not  _ the  _ list. He was being transferred to Ultari today. Fifteen minutes ago to be exact, on the ship he just finished unloading. Matt’s heart sank.

**I just missed him. I’m alone now. Shiro isn’t in this shift and my father is going to a different planet. I’m alone. I have to get out of here, I have to find them. But I can’t. My leg- wait, my leg doesn’t hurt? Must be the suit, probably works how the helmet acts like glasses. So, I could escape, but I don’t know where Shiro is staying and my father left the planet about 15 dobashes ago.**

“You can find them later, but we have to eat now,” chided Estrella as if she could read his thoughts. 

They returned to the barracks, they’d have plenty of time before their next shift. Matt tried to get some sleep, he didn’t know when the last time he did was. Well, he did. It was when he was knocked unconscious by Shiro, but it wasn’t a measurement of time he could use. The blanket on the bed seemed excessively thin, so he slipped on the shirt and leggings from the Gladiatorial Unit over the suit before going to sleep. After what felt like a few hours later, Matt was awoken by a loud Galra voice, a different one than their usual escort. He scrambled for the line, leaving his helmet on his bed.

“All of you are being transferred to Mala Herba. Put on your helmets we will be going outside and boarding the ship.”  **His voice isn’t monotone like the rest of the Galra…**

Matt ran back to his bunk to grab his helmet, as did Estrella. Matt shot her a look, she just shrugged in return. Walking to the ship was fine if you don’t include the part where Matt had a coughing attack while trying to get out the door and ran into the door frame, made Estrella laugh at him and nearly got both of them killed for making noise. Fortunately, they did make it to the door unscathed. When they reached the ship, the Galra stopped moving, the ramp closed behind them and as they took off four other aliens, including another Galra and one who looked like Estrella appeared.

“You are being taken to the planet Mala Herba. I will escort you to your new barracks until we arrive.” The alien that looked like Estrella spoke with the Galra’s traditional monotone.

“Reltra, knock it off. You’re supposed to be the mature one here.” The alien next to her hit her in the arm playfully. “We’re not going to Mala Herba, you’ve just been kidnapped by rebels.”


	2. Good Rebels with Bad Plans

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The Old Rebels have another plan, but so do the New Rebels.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Happy Birthday Pidge, this wasn't planned to come out on your birthday, but here it is. (Well it was planned to come out two weeks from chapter 1, and it happens to be your birthday.)

“Well my name is Maxino, and this  _ dumb idiot  _ standing next to me is Reltra. Basically, we managed to smuggle you guys out of that Galran Base. Usually we try to take more prisoners, but Antar thought it was risky so we only left with your barrack. Normally we try and raid smaller bases, but this time we decided to go to a bigger base just to test the waters. We travel around the Galran Empire and do little things like take their prisoners, or generally mess with their things. Il Razzo is a technology maven and can hack the Galra things to datamine and try and sabotage their plans. Although it seems like getting prisoners would be easier because we have two Galra on our side, this is one of the first--”

 

“Maxino, shut up, you’ll bore them to death before they can even adjudicate if they’re going to help us or not.” Relra moved to slap him, Maxino cowering away in a playful terror. “Besides, they don’t even know who any of us are. I’m Reltra, originally from the planet Pianeta, as I see your friend is.” Reltra acknowledged Estrella, who nodded and gave a shy smile.  **They don’t seem to know each other, but they have something in common. Hopefully that will allow us to work as a team better. Well, if Estrella wants to stay. If we’re allowed to stay.** “Introduce yourselves to us, we’ll introduce ourselves after.”

 

“My name is Estrella, I am indeed from Pianeta. I was about 13 when Pianeta was attacked and captured by the Galra and I was put into the Gladiatorial Unit. I’m not sure how old I am now, but I shouldn’t have been old enough to have been put into the Work Camps.” Estrella spoke without attitude, almost without emotion.  **She’s almost scary when she’s grievous.** She looks over at Bulan, who successively steps forwards.

 

“My name is Bulan, I’m from Nettuno in the Einfallen Star System. My planet was taken just before Pianeta, but unlike Pianeta, Nettuno was blown to microscopic particles of dust. I was in work camps on a different base without a Gladiatorial Unit, but when I was transferred I hacked into the Galran systems and moved my name into a barrack with my  _ dearest friend _ Estrella.” Bulan waltzed over to Estrella’s side, sarcastically wrapping her arms around her shoulders.

 

“I hate you.” Bulan snickers, giving Estrella’s shoulders a little squeeze before walking back to Venere and bumping his shoulder.

 

“Um, well I’m Venere. I’m from Giove, which is technically still a free planet, but I was set to fight on Callisto, which is also blown to microscopic particles of dust, as Lanny said.”  **Lanny?** “I mean Bulan. We’re from the same star system, I knew her before our star system was invaded, our families were.. close.” Venere stutters. Bulan stood silently, not jumping to explain.

 

“I’m Meigen.”

 

“I’m Galassia.”

 

“I’m Matt.”

 

Everyone looked around the room to see who hadn't said their name. Mondlicht and Mahari were holding a silent staring contest to see who would go first. Several moments passed.

 

“This is Mondlicht, and that's Mahari. They don't talk very much." Bulan finally chimed in.

“You’ve met myself and Maxino, that’s Antar. He’s one of two of our Galra, they come in handy for prisoner escorts.” Reltra starting introducing her friends. **He’s the one who escorted us.** “He relies pretty heavily on instinct. He’s worked on the Ultari base in the Fissare Star System and knows the general layout of the bases.” Matt hardly heard anything after Ultari.  **My father is there. He knows the place where my father is. We could get him back if Antar can sneak around and if he knows where the prisoners are and if he knows the schedule there’s a good chance that we can successfully get my father back, especially with Il Razzo hacking the computer system and overriding any alarms.** “Il Razzo is our tech guy. They’re from Fiore which is also in the Fissare system. They do our hacking into the Galra systems and data mining.” Il Razzo looked the most human out of the rest of the alien.  **They look human, but that isn’t possible. Shiro, Dad, and I were the first people to leave our galaxy-**

“MATT!” Estrella shoved his shoulder. Il Razzo was staring at him.

“Now that you’re paying attention, are you from Fiore as well?”

“N-no, I’m from Earth in the Virgo Star System. It’s a far way from here. Far enough that the Galra have only found the edge of our solar system. My kind is very far behind on the entire space travel thing. I was one of the first three people to be sent to the edge of our solar system. We also became the first people to leave the solar system, and the first people to meet species from other planets.”

Il Razzo nodded slowly still looking at Matt.  **Just remember they aren’t human. That’s all. They aren’t human and they’ve never been on earth or seen earth and this is the first time they’ve ever heard of earth.**

“Fouvale is our other Galra. He worked on Ata, a low-level Galran base. Just before Ata was abandoned, he was nearly caught. He managed to escape in the move to a new base, but he knows his way around low-level bases.” 

 

“Alright, well now that that’s over, let’s discuss what we’re going to do with you,” Maxino spoke again.  **Sounds rather diabolical, as if this might not be better than being a Galran slave.**

 

“ _ Maxino. I keep telling you to stop saying it like that, it sounds evil and you’re going to scare them. _ ” Reltra rolled her eyes when she saw Maxino mocking her. “How mature.” She added primly.

 

Maxino sighed before starting, “You have a couple options. You can stay with us and become rebels fighting against the Galran empire, there’s a few of you that we can take back to your planets, or we can drop you off at a random free planet. No judgment will be passed on your decision.”  **I can’t go back without Shiro or Dad. And I can’t just leave this war. The Galra are taking over the universe. Plus, Earth has a reputation to uphold, we have lost exactly zero (0) space wars and we aren’t about to lose our first.** That last part was sarcasm, but it had a ring of truth to it.

 

“I’m staying. Nettuno was destroyed and I’m not about to let the Galra get away with that.” Bulan was the first to say her decision.

 

“I’ve lost my family and my planet to the Galra, I’m staying.” Estrella agreed.

 

“I can’t leave without the rest of my crew. Besides, Earth has a reputation to not lose space wars, we especially can’t lose the first one we’ll be in.” Matt laughed.

 

Venere answered next. “I will continue to fight in the war, but it won’t be here. I’d like to go back to Giove, but I feel like we’ll meet again. I can spread the word of what the Galra have done, and how there are people working against them. I’ll probably be sent to another planet who is working to fight off the Galra.”

 

“We can take you back to Giove, and I agree that we will see each other again,” Antar spoke, everyone nodding in agreement.  **Right, his instincts. Besides, I agree. Something about him. We’ll see him again. Or I could just be delusional, my head still hurts from the probable concussion. Slamming into that doorway didn’t help any.**

 

“I want to go home. But I don’t have a home anymore so take me to a free planet. I don’t care where.” Meigen paused. “I won’t be much help in this war right now. I’m only 11, I have a lot to learn before I become a soldier in this war. But if the war isn’t over when I grow up, I will fight in it… Actually, I do care where. Make it a military planet where I can learn to fight.”

 

“You can come to Giove with me, Giove is quite focused towards training to fight. They’d welcome you even without me, but it’s always good to have more than one person’s word on a situation.” Venere smiled kindly, looking down at her.

 

“I’ll go to any free planet, preferably far, far away from the Galra. I’ve had enough trouble with them, no offense Antar and Fouvale, just the bad Galra.” Galassia quickly added the last bit looking apologetic.  **Glad I’m not the only one who still associates all Galra with being bad. I’m working on it.**

 

Antar responded, “We’ll take you, and presumably the others, to the Binario Star System, which as far as I know is untouched by the Galra. A few planets are centered towards the offensive part war, but most just play on the defensive side. It is unlikely the Galra will be able to take any planet we leave you on. Il Razzo, can you find a calculation of how long it will take to get to Giove?”

 

“Off the top of my head it’ll only be a couple hours, but I have to check.”

 

“Thanks, Il Razzo. Should we take them to the rooms now?” Reltra jumped into the conversation. The other rebels nodded. “Okay, we have enough rooms for all of you, except it’s two to a room, so you’ll have to pair up. We can do that now or you can fight it out on the while we walk.”  **It’s pretty obvious who’s going with who, and probably where. Bulan is obviously going with Venere, Galassia will either go with Mahari or Meigen, but Meigen will probably go with Galassia, and I’ll go with Estrella.**

 

Deciding who was sleeping where went as figured. Galassia ended up going with Meigen, and Mondlicht and Mahari had a room together. The conversation was mostly done through looking at each other and nodding before pairing up.

 

It was a short walk to the rooms. There were six, three on each side of the hallway. Bulan and Venere took the first on the left, Matt and Estrella had the second on the left, Galassia and Meigen had the second on the right, and Mondlicht and Mahari had the last room on the left.

 

Each room consisted of two beds on opposite corners, a lamp by each bed, a dresser like storage cabinet next to the bed, and a table with six chairs sitting on decorative rugs in the center of the room. **The lighting is like the Galran lighting, but it's green, not purple.**

 

"Dinner will be in about 15 dobashes, we'll be down to take you guys, but the pads on the walls have maps so you can explore if you want to. You probably don't have very many belongings, but if you ever need extra room there's compartments in the wall by your beds, just put your hand on the wall and they should open." Reltra left them to settle in, not that there was much settling in to do. The silence seemed to ring through the room as if it was a sound itself.

 

"How's your leg feeling? You aren't limping anymore." While it sounded forced, Matt appreciated the attempt.

 

"Not sure to be honest. I'm pretty sure this work suit helps support it, but if I took it off I'd probably be back to limping. The helmet works as glasses too, so while I can't see much now, if I'd put it on I'd have good vision again, but then I'd have to actually wear the helmet. Not like there's much to see anyways."

 

“What do you  _ mean _ there’s not a lot to see? Have you seen this rug? Of course not because you’re actually blind as fuck.” Matt rolled his eyes. "Yeah, Galran technology is crazy, who would've thought of making suits that help injuries. I guess that's the littlest bit of kindness they have  _ if we are going to have slaves they at least need to be able to do our work efficiently. Then we can call them prisoners, not slaves, they get fed enough and they get suits that help them do our dirty work, that’s two more rights than slaves. _ " Estrella mocked them.  **Sarcastic, but bitter. At least she still has humor.**

 

"Reltra said that we could explore the ship, we still have a little before dinner, would you care to join me?"  **Best get to know where I'm staying, it's going to be a while before I leave.**

 

"Sure, let's go. I'll ask Bulan and Venere if they want to come."  **Get to know my team too, wonderful opportunity.**

 

**Being honest, the only reason we’re not completely lost right now is because of Bulan’s tech skills and my memory. We’re lost, just not completely lost.** Adventuring was  _ interesting, _ to say the least. According to the pads, the third deck was the sleeping rooms. It was sectioned off into four sections with two intersecting hallways. The rebels were on the other side of the cross and there were elevators at each end of the hallway. The second deck was set up in the same way, only with different things.

 

The prisoners had traveled down past the second deck onto the first deck, which contained small ships the others called pods. After that, they went onto the second deck, jumped to the fourth deck, and then got lost on the fifth deck. The fifth deck was what Estrella bluntly called, “An actual maze of literal shit.”  **She isn’t wrong.**

 

There were rooms, but all the rooms were connected, like some kind of sick joke. Various items littered the floor.  **_Katie and Matt, you’d better clean this up when you’re done._ ** Matt could hear his mother telling them to clean their things.  **Except that I’m not at home. I’m not in town, in my state, in my country, continent, planet, or solar system.**

 

“How much longer do we have until dinner?” Venere sounded mildly anxious, but at this point, everyone sounded that way.  **Venere gets anxious when things start to go wrong.**

 

“We’ll find  _ out  _ when we find a pad.” snapped Bulan.  **And Bulan gets bitchy. Good to know, don’t get on her bad side, she does, in fact, have one.**

 

“Bulan, you have to take it from up here to down here, calm down, take deep breaths whatever, we just have to find one of the elevators and we can be on our way.” Estrella didn’t sound particularly annoyed or anxious, but her body language said otherwise.  **She taps her finger against her leg when she’s frustrated, but she has control over her voice and attitude towards other people. It’s like she’s trying to soothe them, or maybe she’s subconsciously trying to soothe herself? She probably doesn’t even realize she’s doing it, or maybe she does know and does it with the intention to try and keep everyone together and calm? Either way, she can remain physically calm under stress, but who knows what’s going on in her head.**

 

Bulan stopped walking and took a deep breath before starting, “Matt, have you figured out any kind of setup for this deck?”

 

“Well, so far we’ve gone five rooms in this direction, without turning. Before that, we went two rooms before taking a right turn, and before that, we went through four rooms before taking a left turn. Before that, I don’t know. But we know it’s longer than nine rooms across. If we keep walking, eventually we’ll find a room without a door in the direction we’re walking. From there we will walk in one of the side directions until we either hit a corner or find an elevator. Every room looks like it’s the same size, and all of them are squares or rectangles that are close to being squares. By the looks of them, there should be about 13 rooms on each side. Except that it’s probably 11 because the ship is skinnier at the top compared to the bottom. That being said the elevators would be in the 6th room along each side because they’re centered. We aren’t along any walls, and we haven’t been for the past several directions, so we can assume we’re somewhere in the middle of the space.” He is met with bewildered looks.

 

“How- wha- I-” unable to form a complete thought, Estrella looks over to Bulan.

 

“I believe what she is trying to say is along the lines of ‘what the fuck’ and ‘how did you do that’, and I’d have to agree with her.”  **Her snappiness has been replaced with her sarcasm now that her mind has been taken off the situation.**

 

“It was really a simple analyzation. It involved a lot of guesswork and not a lot of time to think. If you give me long enough I could probably take us directly back to where we came from, but it’s probably easier just to find an exit. I’d say we keep walking the way we were going until we find a room-”

 

“Matt.” Venere cut him off. “Take a deep breath, slow down and speak up. You keep almost trailing off before actually talking again and you aren’t focused on conveying your ideas, you’re still creating them. That’s great and all, but I think you have a way to find an exit with logic rather than just walking around, but you need to focus on getting out of here and not figuring out where we are.”  **He did the same thing as Bulan, as soon as he had something other than being lost to think about his anxiety seemed to go away.**

“Right, right, sor- no! Not literally right, I- we’re going to keep going in the direction we have been until we find a room with no door the way we’re going. Once we get there we’ll decide which direction to go.”

 

The four of them decided that was enough exploring for the day, just making it back to the third deck before Fouvale came into their hallway with the announcement for dinner. Everyone filed into the elevator back down to the second floor. **I’m starving the last time I ate was.. I guess it was.. earlier today. No that isn’t really right, I didn’t really eat the Galran food. I hope they have something better this time.**

 

“Maxino did you push together the tables in Quadrant 1 yet?”  **Sounds like a cafe except who would name a cafe Quadrant 1?**

 

Maxino called back, “Doing that now, care to lend a hand?” Fouvale grinned.

 

As they walked into Quadrant 1 he replied, “I don’t know, I’d rather not. I have to show these ex-prisoners to the kitchen and make sure they get their food.”  **You know, this is a cafe. There’s 15 some tables, this place is giant, and it smells like alien food.**

 

While the sarcasm ran deep in Fouvale’s voice, Maxino ignored it, “We should switch, you have the muscle to move these tables and I have the brains to get to the food.”

“Are you saying you’re weak?” he shot back.

 

Maxino huffs, “.. dickhead.” Fouvale didn’t help with the tables.

 

Dinner was served buffet style, numerous dishes laying on the island in the kitchen.  **This “island” is actually the size of Hawaii, it’s nearly 15 yards long I’d bet.** The line began at the curved end of the island. The first dish looked like some kind of rice or grain, and it looked generally safe to eat, so Matt put some on his plate. He passed on the next dish, whatever it was it was bright green and bubbling, probably not that safe to eat.  **I wonder how much of this is edible to humans.. hopefully, everything I take is edible. What an awful way to die, in space because I ate something that killed me, not from falling into a black hole, or dying in the war, just eating something that is toxic to me.** By the end of the line, Matt’s plate was full of small portions or several dishes.  **The peach pear fruits are edible.** The fruit that looked like a peach on the outside, looked like an apple on the inside and tasted like a pear. The mix of “vegetables” was actually meat.  **This might not be edible. Sure hope it is.**

 

After a while, everyone was seated. The some of the tables had been rearranged so that they were sitting at a long rectangular table with two semicircle tables attached at the end. Technically there weren’t enough seats, but they simply added another. Matt sat in between Estrella and Mondlicht. (Going clockwise has Reltra at the head, Maxino on her right, Il Razzo on his right, Mahari on their right, Galassia, Meigen, Mondlicht, Matt, Estrella, Bulan, Venere, Fouvale, Antar, and then we’re back to Reltra).

 

“Now that everyone is settled in and everyone has food, let’s discuss tomorrow’s schedule.” Reltra placed her hand on the table and a green holographic display appeared. She moved her fingers on the table, then lifted her hand and flicked her fingers apart. The holographic design suddenly filled the room, a map of known space with planets, stars, and information on many places.  **Space technology is incredible.**

“We’re here, and we’re headed for Giove now. We should arrive in the morning, and then we’ll drop off Meigen and Venere. After that, we’re headed for the Fissare star system, which is closer than the Binario System for another rescue mission.”  **Already? Are they ready? Are we ready?** “We’ll be headed for the planet Legna to free 16 prisoners.”  **Doesn’t sound good, that’s two barracks of prisoners, not just one. Fewer people in the control room and fewer people guarding. I guess they have more rebels now and more people to work with.** “Normally we won’t do two missions in a row,”  **Definitely pushing it.** “but according to the information we’ve gathered, the day after tomorrow they’ll be getting a new shipment of droids and the security will be much harder to surpass.”  **Better now than never I suppose. Still, this doesn’t feel good.** “We should arrive at Legna about two vargas after we leave Giove.”  **I’m not sure how long a varga is, it sounds like it’s about an hour, that’s not a lot of preparation time. Does she have a plan?**

 

Fouvale got to the question first. “What are we going to do with the extra hands?”  **Probably utilize us in minimal ways so that we can’t really hurt anything until we know our-**

“We’ll be dividing them up and giving them different jobs. We’ll have Estrella, Bulan, and Mahari in pods helping to guard the entrance.”  **What? Do they even know how to fly? Is one of the rebels going with them?** “Fouvale and Antar will be collecting the prisoners.”  **At least that seems rational, but still…** “I’ll be helping to guard the control room with Matt and Mondlicht, and Galassia and Maxino can help Il Razzo invade the Galran System.”  **Did she put any thought into this? I’m pretty sure Bulan specifically said she was good with technology to the Rebels, so why didn’t Reltra put Bulan with Il Razzo? Hell, I’d probably be more help. Does she know if Estrella, Bulan, or Mahari can fly? Have they seen the pods? Have the pods been checked since they were last used to see what kind of shape they’re in? Do Mondlicht and Mahari even want to help? They certainly wouldn’t say anything if they didn’t. What’s Antar think about this?**

 

Matt may not have known Antar well, but it was clear that Antar had his doubts about the plan. Unfortunately, the doubts were silent and his face hid what he was feeling. But the way his shoulders were held slightly higher than before and how his ears were turned to lay almost flat against his head proved the worries. The other unfortunate thing was either no one noticed besides Matt, or no one said anything about it or asked him his opinion. **I thought he was super intuitive, so why hasn’t anyone asked about this plan?**

 

Dinner seemed to finish quietly, although it’s possible Matt just drowned everything out with his doubts about tomorrow. Maxino volunteered to take everyone back to the barracks for the night.

 

**Okay, let’s think about this. There’s almost no way that Reltra asked Estrella or Bulan if they could fly pods. We went off to explore the ship, and I doubt that Mahari would know if they could pilot or not, they don’t talk to anyone and I haven’t heard Estrella or Bulan say anything about piloting. Also, Bulan specifically mentioned hacking the Galra successfully, so why didn’t Bulan automatically get paired with Il Razzo?**

 

“FUCKER!” Matt gasps. While still deep in thought they made it to the barracks and he was currently gripping the edge of the table. He not only walked into the table, he stubbed his toe into the leg.  **It’s always like this, I stop paying attention, slam into something, and oh look, Estrella is over there laughing her ass off, surprise surprise.** He rolls his eyes as he lessens his grip at the table, sliding into one of the chairs.

 

“You aren’t very good at paying attention to where you’re going. What’s on your mind this time?” Estrella pulled out a chair on the opposite side of the table to face him.

 

“The plan isn’t going to work.” He looks her in the eye.  **My helmet would be convenient right now, I can’t even see her face.**

 

“Tell me about it. I feel like she didn’t think this through at all. I mean, in general, I can fly pods, I was training to when I was taken by the Galra, but I don’t even know what kind of pods they have, and she never asked me if I could fly or not.” She raises her voice, “Mondlicht, you can come in.” Mondlicht steps in.  **How the hell?** “We’re starting to talk about the faults in this plan.” He nodded.

 

“What confuses me most is the role of Bulan in this. When we were introducing ourselves she specifically mentioned hacking into the Galran systems to move her name. So why didn’t Reltra put  _ her _ with Il Razzo instead of Galassia? Does Galassia even have any background in technology? I mean I’d probably be of more help, and I’ve never seen any technology like Galran technology.”

 

“I know, also, Bulan has never piloted before. Speaking of which, if you don’t mind I’m going to invite her over, may as well make this a party.” Matt just nodded, collecting his thoughts.  **Bulan should be with Il Razzo, Galassia should be on lookout with Maxino, Reltra should be with Estrella guarding the entrance, in pods. Reltra flew in one of the pods when they took us, so why isn’t she this time? Fouvale and Antar need to be the ones collecting prisoners, but that’s obvious. Mondlicht, Mahari, and I could probably look after this ship, I mean it’d probably be mostly Mondlicht and me, but still.**

 

Bulan’s voice floated into the room. “We’ve just met and we’re already shit talking about others together.” Matt flipped around in his chair to see Estrella, Bulan, and Venere.

 

“It’s highly necessary.” Matt shrugged. “We at least need to create a backup or escape plan, I mean, she didn’t even really give details on what was happening and how. We’ll let them worry about getting in, but getting out is a little different.”

 

“I agree, although I won’t be there, I know a thing or two about military strategy. Strong plans are always necessary, and often times, safety means creating plans behind leader’s backs.” Venere spoke with sincerity.

 

Bulan nodded, “Before that, let me point out I have never piloted or flown in my life, and Relra never asked me if I did. Also, if you give me a second I’ll pull up the map.” Reltra moved her hand over the table like Reltra had, zooming into where their ship was and where Giove was. “Okay, so they were correct in saying we should reach Giove by morning, but it’s going to take longer than they think to reach Legna. They calculated how long it would take traveling at a linear rate the entire way, not calculating gravitational pulls or this meteor that will be going through just in time to crush us all. We’ll swerve to miss the meteor, but we’ll swerve right into the gravitational pull of Albero. If we try and avoid the pull of Albero, the trip will take about 15 dobashes longer, messing up the shift schedules for the prisoners.”

 

Estrella pointed to one of the planets between Giove and Legna, “What about Tempus Praesidium 7, wouldn’t we pass into their gravitational pull as well?”

 

Bulan looked at it for a moment and nodded. Tapping her fingers on the table more she pulled up a calculator.  **She’s calculating how long it would take to get through the gravitational pull. That’s insane, she’s just doing a pretty complicated astrophysics formula off the top of her head.**

 

As she finished the calculation she began, “It’d tack on about 30 dobashes, but if we consider Legna pulling us in once we hit its gravitational pull, total it’d only add on 30 dobashes including the pull of Albero. But that’s still nearly half a varga and the work shifts would be screwed up. We’d  _ hopefully _ be staying in the ship out of reach of the Galran sensors, but realistically even if we do wait in the ship we’ll have to defend ourselves. The work camp would be put on lockdown so the security would be increased anyways and our chance of not getting caught is down to about 0%.” 

 

“Are we confronting Reltra on this?” Matt spoke quietly.

 

“Not yet, no. Not for this mission. I want to see how this plays out before we slowly start to take control of the rebels.” Estrella jumped in.

 

“Well, not control of the rebels, just their missions, how they plan them, and eventually probably their goals in them, but the rebels themselves we can’t change,” Bulan added.

 

“Okay, I’m just thinking out loud,” Matt’s voice was still low, “I don’t think that we can’t really rely on Antar and Fouvale to be able to get the prisoners without getting caught along the way. The only problem is that there’s no one at the control panel that can help much while data mining. Unless Bulan, do you think you could create a slight bug for the galran info that could minorly shut down some of the security? It’d have to be small enough that it goes mostly unnoticed and it’d probably have to be able to glitch out things that aren’t just security related. If we can find a chip to store it on, we could give it to Galassia with instructions of how to start it.”

 

“Yeah, first though I’m going to go get Galassia, and then I’m going to go into one of the empty rooms to destroy the table. I mean get a chip.” Bulan winks sarcastically and leaves the room.

 

“Okay, so the bug will provide at least a little more security during the mission, but you still have the problem of arriving 30 dobashes late of a shift. And I think I can help that. If I can stall while we get to Giove for a while, you guys would arrive at Legna a shift later, but then you wouldn’t have the problem of timing. I’ll let Meigen know what’s going on. Don’t worry about arriving at a weird time, I’ll take care of that. Plan on arriving just before a regular shift change,”  **I’m glad he feels like he can contribute, and I’m glad it’s not just approving plans. He’s taking care of problems that we didn’t really have any control over.**

 

Galassia stepped in the room, Meigen behind them. “I hear we’re shit talking plans and creating new ones, how can I assist?”

 

Estrella took the question, “I’ve got this. Quick summary of what has happened: Due to the gravitational pull of multiple planets we’re going to arrive late to Legna and the work shifts will be thrown off. The solution is for Venere, and Meigen now that you’re here you as well, are going to find a way to keep us on Giove for the half varga that would put us just on Legna just before the shift changes. Second thing, Bulan is going to write up a bug on a chip that you can insert into the control board, she’ll fill you in on that.” 

 

“Alright, so we’re going to arrive on time at Legna, do they know how to get in? I’m not entirely sure how they did it last time, but when we were prisoners, I think they took the smaller control room that was at the front of the base, and put their ship outside, waiting to pick us up. I think that’s a dumb idea and we can’t do that. Besides, what if there’s already a ship in the front? Can anyone pull up a map of Legna?” Matt continued going through the mission and everything that could possibly go wrong.

 

“Yeah, give me a second.” Estrella spun the table’s display until it was facing her, then maneuvered her hands in the air until a map of Legna spread across the table.

 

“That’s the base, right?” Meigen pointed to a cube of a building. Even with the green lights it still glowed purple.

 

“That’s it,” Venere confirmed. Estrella expanded the base until everything that wasn’t part of the Galran base no longer appeared on the table. The main doors were easy to spot, but it didn’t look like there were any back doors.

 

“Assuming that there’ll be a ship waiting out front after the prisoners starting unloading it, we could drop the ship somewhere along here. The base looks similar to the one we were in, so assuming that the barracks are on the third floor, we could blast our ways in onto the third floor, drop off Antar and Fouvale, have Estrella in a pod just outside the entrance waiting to pick them up. Tomorrow during the two varga we can check out the pods and try to teach Bulan to fly. I doubt Mahari is going to want to, they, in all honesty, might not even leave the ship.” Matt pointed to different places on the base while explaining.

 

“Actually, I’ll tell Mahari that they don’t have to leave the ship unless they already know how to fly, that way someone is still on the ship too. So what about the rest of us? Are we going to try and find a different control room, or are we going to stick with the one in the front because we know one will be there?”

 

Matt paused, “We have to stick to the one in the front. We really don’t have a choice, we can’t afford to not be able to place the bug. When we arrive at Legna, we’ll send Bulan in a pod down with Reltra, myself, Il Razzo, Galassia, Maxino, and Mondlicht. Antar and Fouvale can help fly to the back, from there we’ll send them in a pod with Estrella to the third floor. Estrella, you can decide with Bulan how you defend us, but stay near our entrances to guard us. Those of us in the control room should be able to see when Antar and Fouvale are leaving with the prisoners, and we’ll get out of there. Everyone meets on the ship and we leave as fast as possible. We can try and make sure that Mahari can keep the ship ready for us to leave.”

 

As everyone nodded Bulan came back in, holding a chip. “Destroyed the table.” She grinned.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Matt's thought process here is ever so important, this chapter in general is pretty important. Originally it was a transitional chapter, but now it's more of a chapter with a ton of things that are important to future events.


	3. Deteriorating Plans

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The plan falls flat.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> this is so much shorter than the other chapters whoops  
> there's a couple new voices type things  
> bolded is still matt  
> italics is the technology  
> and bolded and italics is matt talking to the tech

“KATIE!” Matt sat up and screamed, clenching the sheets in his fists. Staring into the darkness, he remembered where he was.  **Kerberos, alien abduction, injury, work, rebels. I’m in the ship barracks. Katie is-**

 

“Matt? Are you okay?” Estrella called from across the small room, concern bleeding into her voice. He tried to catch his breath before answering.

 

**Katie is safe on Earth.** “Fine, just a nightmare, it’s okay.” Matt sighed, “What time is it?” 

 

“Not sure, but I think we have a few vargas. Who’s Katie?”

 

“She’s my little sister back on Earth. We were really close before I left.”  **She’s one of three things I miss from Earth. Katie, Mom, and our dog.**

 

“Oh. I had a little brother like that. We were always up to no good.” She laughs lamentably. “I almost feel bad for my parents, they put up with so much.”

 

“Tell me about it. Katie and I were always doing something. Usually being up for multiple days and functioning on coffee.”  **Usually doing something with trying to prove that aliens were real. We were right.**

 

“Coffee?”

 

“Oh yeah, um, it’s a drink on Earth that tends to be pretty bitter, but it gives you bursts of energy. It’s not really good for kids and it’s slightly addicting, but it’s not that bad for you.”  **It’s not good for kids and the amount of it that we used to drink was over the top. Especially Katie.**

 

“I think we had a drink similar to it on Pianeta, kafinon. It didn’t taste very good, and it was toxic if you had too much, but you could sweeten it and it gave you energy. I actually think there’s a kafinon machine here, we might be able to have some.” **Thank god, I’m going to need the energy.**

 

“That sounds good.”  **Oh shit, that sounded bad.** Matt quickly explained, “I mean having it, it doesn’t sound like a good drink, especially the toxic part, but I’d like to try it.” Estrella laughed.

 

Estrella climbed out of bed, walking towards the table. “Well now that I’m awake, I might as well get something done.”

 

Matt joined her at the table. “Do you know how to use this?” She nodded.

 

“Teach me. I’m going to be here for a while and I’ve never used any of this technology before.”

 

“Okay, well, it’s fairly simple, it’s programmed to help work with you personally. It can read the neurological transmissions coming from your fingers. The longer you use it, the better it works for you. If you just start by touching it, imagine it turning on.” Matt did as she said, the green display coming to life. **This might be easier than I thought.** “Good. We’ll start with easier functions. I doubt you can read any of this if you’re from a completely different area of space, but that’s alright. Think about bringing up the time and tap somewhere on the display. From now on unless you want to move it the time is going to be there.” **_Bring up the time, and keep it here so I can always see it._** _3:64_. **Alien time is weird.**

 

“Is this all there is to it? I mean, just thinking of different things and putting them places on the displays?” 

 

“For the most part. These tables have limited options though until they are either programmed to be more complicated. It’s been known that select individuals can program in functions, but usually, they have to be manually programmed.”  **Makes sense, but now I have to try and see what a complicated function would be to see if I can program it. Maybe it’s just thinking of the programming mentally?**

 

“I’m gonna play with this for a few minutes, see what all I can get it to do for me if you don’t mind.” Matts words faded as he spoke, engulfing himself in the displays. Estrella chuckled and nodded, even though she knew he wouldn’t have seen her.

 

**I need to be able to look at the map definitely. Also, I’m going to need a space-time calculator, and a way to learn whatever language this is in.** **_Open the map function._ ** The map spread across the table. He moved his hands to zoom in.  **_Find where our ship is._ ** The map blinked towards the end of the table.  **_Keep this ship in memory._ ** Matt jerked his hand away when the display buzzed. Hesitantly he reached back out to touch it.

 

“One question, how can we touch these if it’s just projections of light? Also, has it ever buzzed at you?” Matt looked perplexed and mildly horrified.

 

“Um, they’re not really projections of light, it’s more like combinations of atoms being moved at will, so it is a physical thing, and it buzzes to confirm that it understood something that can’t be seen when it happens,” Estrella informed him.

 

“Oh. okay. That’s good, I guess.” Matt relaxed.

 

**_Take down the map. Open translator._ ** The display rearranged itself to a hand print.  **What?** _ Place hand on the display to set native language. _

 

“One more question, can it talk to you?” he asked, panicked.

 

Estrella’s head jerked up. “Sorry, what’d you say?”

 

“Can the displays talk to you?” he repeated.

 

She rubbed her eyes, “Yeah, if it senses that you ah,” she yawned. “If it senses that you don’t understand something it can try and explain to you what to do. Oh, did you find the translator?”

 

“Yeah, last thing before you need to get some sleep, what language would be most useful to this war?”

 

“Galran, is that what your alphabet looks like? I don’t recognize it.”

 

“Thanks, and yes, this is English, the most common language on Earth. Now off to bed, you’re falling asleep sitting up.”

 

She rejected the idea, “Matt, I’m fine I don’t-”

 

He covered her mouth with his hand. “Shut up and go to bed before I drag you there.”

 

She pried his hand off. “As if you could.” She rolled her eyes before yawning again.  **Just like Katie.** With that he stood up, walked behind her chair and wrapped his arms around her from behind before picking her up and walked her to bed, her feet dragging along the floor.

 

“Maaaaattttttt,” she whined. “I hope you know that I’m just going to get back up, you can’t keep me here.”

 

“I will sit on you.”

 

“Then you can’t work with the computer.”  **Or can I?**

 

**_Bring the display over here._ ** The display appeared in front of him, and the voice seemed to almost laugh at him.

 

“What the- Matt? How’d you- I’ve never-” she stuttered. 

 

“Go. To. Sleep.” The display shut off. 

 

**_Not you._ ** _ The laughter was back.  _ **_Fuck off._ **

 

_ Would you like to start learning Galran now, or later? _

 

The ship arrives outside of Giove’s gravitational pull at 6:48, but the rebels don’t come to collect them for breakfast until 8:00. By that time, Matt found a space-time calculator, found a file with backed up data from the ship, and mentally programmed and uploaded a version of a flash game without having to manually program it. **It was a test, I needed something simple to program in my head so I could see if it would work.** He just wanted a flash game to play while Estrella slept.

Breakfast was less appetizing than dinner.  **This is goo, not food, and it tastes like raw okra. I will not take this.** He eats it anyways.

 

“Oh, here’s the kafinon machine. Hey, does anyone know if there are any noney beans around here?” Estrella was much more awake after the couple vargas of sleep.

 

“There should be some in the swivel cabinet on the island behind you,” Reltra called in return.

 

**The swivel cabinet is like a lazy sus- wait, are those coffee beans?** Matt picked up on of the noney beans and put it close to his face.  **Stupid eyes, I need my helmet.**

 

“I’d ask you what you’re doing, but I know you’re blind without the helmet.”  **Sarcastic as ever.**

 

“I think these might be coffee beans, like on earth. I’m going to go grab my helmet just to be sure,” he debated jogging, but ultimately decided against it because  **ew running.**

 

When he got back to the kitchen, Estrella was still waiting with the kafinon machine, dark liquid dripping into a cup. Matt slid on his helmet and grabbed a noney bean. The helmet helped by zooming in on the bean.  **It looks like a coffee bean.** He took off his helmet and smelled it.  **Smells like a coffee bean.**

 

“Estrella, what would happen if I nibble on this?”

 

“If it’s just one you’re probably fine unless it’s extremely toxic to your kind, but it’ll probably be fine.” she shrugged.

 

Gingerly, he took a small bite out of it.  **It’s a coffee bean. Definitely a coffee bean.**

 

Matt grinned, “On a scale of one to ten, how mad would you be if I said that we have these on earth and I can drink as much kafinon as I like without any risk of getting sick or dying?”

 

She paused for a moment, “Probably a three. You said it isn’t that good for you and it’s slightly addictive, but I’d be jealous that you can drink as much as you want because of the energy bursts. It’s a coffee bean?”

“It’s a coffee bean,” he confirmed.  **Thank god too, at least I have a steady drink that isn’t water or some risky juice or something.**

 

She nodded. “I have a feeling that my rating of three is going to get higher.” The kafinon machine beeped to signal that it was done. “Do you know how to use this?”

  
  


After everyone had eaten, Reltra summoned everyone to Quadrant 4, which looked like a living room, but really big. Like a furniture store. The center of the room was lower than the rest, couches lined the outside of the lower area.

 

Reltra cleared her throat, “We are currently just outside of Giove’s gravitational pull. It has come to my attention that we are over one of the oceans on Giove and we’ll have to fly to a different part of the planet, adding about half a varga onto our trip.”  **Does she just not care about the timing with the half varga? Did she realize that we would end up being a half varga late anyways, but with the extra half varga it evens out with the work shifts?**  “It will be easier to fly straight above the gravitational pull and then descend straight down onto land, we will begin that after this  _ gathering _ closes.” She gives Maxino a pointed look.  **He probably said something about this being a meeting or something.** “Does anyone have any questions about the mission on Legna?”

 

Everyone exchanged glances, nothing was said and everyone went back to their rooms. Matt hardly made it into the door before Estrella exploded.

 

“Did she just.. not think about the timing issues? I mean, I understand forgetting to calculate gravitational pulls. The asteroid was a bit outrageous, but she straight up said that we’d be a half varga late as if it didn’t effect anything. There’s no way she could have thought that maybe she had forgotten something and realized that she missed several calculations for the timing to get to Legna. If she did, she would’ve mentioned it like ‘oh, by the way, we’re going to arrive when there’s already a cargo ship in place and it’s going to screw up several things with our plan.’ At least Venere did his job. I’m just glad that she didn’t look at a map. We’re not over an ocean, we’re actually over open fields, not too far from actual civilization, which would be great to land on.” She sighed, clearly annoyed.

 

“I was thinking the same thing,” Matt sighed, rubbing his hands over his face. “Did you ever get a chance to look at the ships in the hangers?” Estrella shook her head. “Grab Bulan and head down to see what you’re working with. I want to study some of the ships, get a feel for how they run, how they’re built, and what they’re made for.” 

 

“Alright, I’m going to steal Estrella from you and learn to fly before I actually kill myself and several other people while trying to fight the Galra.” Bulan laughed, taking Estrella by the arm and walking her over to the armored and armed pods.

 

**Okay, so I want to take inventory before doing anything.** He headed for the regular escape pods.  **Ten that can carry up to 30 people, five that can only carry 15.** The second quadrant had only armored pods.  **Six that carry 30, five that carry 20, four that carry 10, four that carry 15. Where did they get these?** There were 23 armed pods, and 23 armed and armored pods, but it looked like there was a 24th that was currently out with Bulan and Estrella. 

 

**I don’t really want to fly anything right now, I’d probably kill myself. But I do want to see if they work like the tables.** They worked similarly to the tables, but that didn’t mean he could fly it.  **The displays actually linked with the ones I set up on the table, so that’ll make it easier to collect data while flying. Now what? I know how the ship runs, for the most part, I know how many of everything there is. I guess I’ll head back to the room and play with the table for a bit.**

 

Gratuitous to say, the mission went according to plan. As planned by the Prisoners that is. It was because of the Prisoners that they made it out with two new prisoners. Had the Rebels been completely in control, there would have been no prisoner escapees, and they’d be either Galran prisoners or dead, the latter being the more favorable option.

There was a ship when they arrived, and half of the prisoners were commencing a work shift. Bulan managed to get a good enough hand in flying, the technology background helped quite a bit. Mahari stayed in the main ship while Estrella and Bulan took the Rebels and other Prisoners. Estrella went around to the front of the base with the control room people, the guards, and Fouvale who was picking up the prisoners who were outside. Bulan took Antar to the third deck where he slipped in to grab prisoners.

How Bulan and Estrella managed to fight off the fleets is a mystery. How fourteen of the prisoners died or were recaptured isn't. One of the eight prisoners in the middle of the work shift survived. Four were unquestionably dead, two were severely injured, two were seen being recaptured.

Less death happened on Antar's part, but that was expected. Seven of the eight prisoners didn't make it out of the building to Bulan. None were gravely injured, but the one who made it onto Bulan's ship had at least a minor break in their ankle.

And Matt got to watch everything fall apart.

  1. **We don't have a way to communicate.**
  2. **Reltra never asked us what our abilities were.**
  3. **No specifics were planned.**
  4. **The timing of our arrival was ignored.**
  5. **And look! Half of Fouvale's prisoners just got killed, oh good, Estrella's here to get us.**



"We're waiting for Il Razzo to finish the download this is-" Matt was already grabbing her and running. Galassia grabbed the chip and Il Razzo, Maxino just went with it and ran. Estrella high tailed it to the main ship, arriving just after Bulan and they were gone.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> okay so the beginning part with Estrella and Matt wasn't supposed to be romantic at all, it's not shippy, but it came out like that so just bare with me, it's not a thing


	4. Too Bad

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The Prisoners start to plan their first mission.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> this is was supposed to be done by May 1st. It's May 29th, tomorrow is the second to last day of the month and that's a basic explanation of everything wrong in this chapter  
> idk there's lots of planning, some of what went wrong in the mission is talked about  
> I'm planning on writing more of what happened in ASoPT, when I have the energy or time. I finish school June 8th, but I have obligations with dance until June 17th, but after that everything should start being more consistent again.

"I don't know what the hell you guys were thinking, but what you did was not okay." They had scarcely made it onto the ship before Reltra started talking. Matt looked at Estrella, who looked at Bulan, who didn't look back.

"I don't know what the hell you were thinking, but we're the reason any of us survived and the reason we got any information. By the way, you're welcome for breaking the firewall on the Galra tech so you got any information." Bulan snapped and walked out. Estrella followed her soundlessly. The others trickled out, leaving Reltra alone.

What moved Bulan to decide that they were meeting in Matt and Estrella's room is something no one asked, but it seemed appropriate enough.  **_Show me where the ship is and where it’s course is set for._ ** The ship was nearing the Binario Star System, headed for Feaveai.

"We'll reach the Binario Star System in about two vargas. That leaves two vargas to figure out how we're going to confront Reltra and the other prisoners." A light conversation ensued around Matt, not that he heard it over his thoughts.

**We can't have a repeat of this. Two survivors of sixteen prisoners. We need a plan.** Matt pulled up a notebook like function, words appearing as his brain conjured up ideas. **Start with smaller planets… Have to remember where they are… Need a calculator to see how long is between the Einfallen and Klavier Star Systems. Estrella or Bulan would probably know… What about the prisoners in the Gladiatorial Unit? How much information did we get during the mission? Does the table know anything about who rules each planet? Are there communicators on the ship? Could we build the communicators?**

Silence slowly consumed the room as the others became aware of what Matt was typing.

"Anyone besides Matt speak English?" Estrella was the first to speak.

"I know how to confront the Rebels."

The plan to tell the Rebels was fairly simple, but everything is always easier said than done. And following the pattern of the day, it didn't go the way it was supposed to. The plan was to wait until after they had dropped off the Prisoners who were leaving in the Binario Star System. The plan was to wait until they were planning on going to another Galran base to rescue more prisoners. What actually happened started with Reltra trying to confront everyone at dinner about the events earlier that day.

"I understand that the mission earlier today could be considered a failure," Reltra paused when Estrella huffed under her breath, "but that does not excuse the fact that none of you are experienced rebels and all of you seemed to take control of the mission even though most of you have no way of knowing what was going on."

Bulan breathed, "Estrella. Don't." She moved her arm in front of Estrella, holding her back.

Reltra continued, "I hope you realize that if all of you just let us keep everything under control instead of meddling with the plan-"

"What plan? There  _ was  _ no  _ plan _ . If we let you keep everything "under control" all of us would have died. You didn't ask any of us what we could try and help with. Did you know what Bulan had never flown a ship until two vargas before reaching Legna because I helped her learn general maneuvers? No. You didn't know because you didn't ask her if she had ever flown before. Did you just  _ forget  _ that Bulan has hacked the Galran systems before? Did you realize that yesterday she tore apart one of the tables to find a specific chip that she then programmed to help corrupt the security system while gathering information not only stored on the system but also how the program was written? But Bulan isn’t the only one. Have you ever seen Matt? No offense, but he’s a twig with no muscle. Yet, you put him on guard duty. Why? And you must have  _ forgotten  _ the asteroid that we narrowly avoided. You know, the one that almost killed us? And I guess that you didn't have enough sense to look at a map of Giove to think 'hey, maybe we aren't over an ocean.' The way you acted so casually about being late to Legna was absolutely ridiculous. Didn't anyone here besides us recognize that due to the differences in the speeds with the gravitational pulls that we wouldn't arrive at Legna before the ship that they'd be unloading would arrive? No. None of you thought of anything, and if you did, none of you dared to question Reltra's stupid ass plan. But you know who thought of everything that could go wrong? Just about all of us prisoners, who  _ aren’t experienced rebels _ . And you know who has a brilliant plan? Matt. This kid devised a plan, admittedly it needs a little work on the specifics, but that’s only because his kind is extremely new to the concept of space travel and is only here by accident. His plan actually includes general mission set ups, collects more prisoners, and has positions that aren’t filled yet because he doesn’t know everyone’s strengths yet. He’s also started a general order of bases to hit and is working on more specific and individual plan. Matt’s the newest person here, but compared to you he’s already fought and won three wars and this is a walk in the park. But nope, we’re the new ones here.” Her eyes bored into Reltra.

“I’m sorry, but how easy do you think it is to plan rescue missions? You have never been a part of the meticulous planning that we do, right guys?” She looked around, but no one met her eye.

Estrella laughed, “No, we haven’t been around for the  _ meticulous  _ planning, probably because your plans are the definition of basic and bare minimum. It seems a lot like your thought process was, ‘this data shows a jump in security tomorrow, let’s go save some people before a hard thing becomes even harder,’ instead of something like, ‘well the security provisions are being strengthened, but we need to prepare and plan for it, so we aren’t going to go in until we know what we’re doing and we’re actually prepared for it. I’m not saying it’s easy. I’m saying it’s hard and you suck at it.’”

“That isn’t true. Yes, this mission was rushed, but we’re seasoned rebels and we work well with each other. We used you guys in for extra hands and because you’ll need the experience.”

“The experience of nearly being killed? Already had it, that’s why I was a Galran prisoner in the first place.” She shoved the chair back and stormed out of the kitchen.

**Should someone go after her or? Oh, Bulan’s got- Bulan’s got my arm and we’re both following her, alright.** Bulan let go of his arm after they left the kitchen.

“You didn’t need to grab me so tight, Estrella wasn’t wrong when she said I was a twig, damn.” Matt rubbed his arm, trying to keep up with Bulan.

“Complain later,” Bulan quipped. “She’s probably in the training room about to cause some major damage to whatever she can find.”

**There she is, but she’s not fighting?** No, she wasn’t fighting, or training, or practicing. She was lying in the middle of the room staring at the ceiling. 

“Wow, you’re training really hard right now.” Bulan walked through the door and helped her up.

“By the time I got up here, I had already blown off all the steam.”  **She blows off steam quickly, it’s the built up anger that we should be afraid of.**

Matt spoke up, “Might as well go back to the room and work on the plan, we’re gonna have a while before we can return to the kitchen to get food because I’m  _ not  _ going to go back while anyone is still around.” 

After everyone was situated at their seats on the table, Bulan started, “We should probably review all the things that ended up going wrong, or that could’ve been prevented.” 

We can’t communicate with each other unless we are within hearing range. The individual groups didn’t have plans worked out. Most people weren’t in a place where they would be most useful. Reltra’s plan-  **Estrella no.** The plan was haphazardly put together.  **Thank you.** The list continued to grow until they had a basis of what they needed to do.

“Okay so first we’re basically interrogating Maxino, Fouvale, Antar, and Il Razzo to find out what went wrong on their parts, what their strengths are, and what Reltra’s strengths are. Then we take that information, begin forming a thorough plan and backups for everything that can go wrong. We find all the equipment that could possibly be of use to us. Then we,” Matt paused. **I know, this we find all the equipment, and then we… we, god I should know this, it’s my own plan.**

“Then we reveal the plans to the others and get their approval and input before editing what we forgot because they’re bound to be able to think of something that we missed.” Estrella finished his thought.  **Why couldn’t I think of that?**

Bulan picked up after that, “And then we let them make their smaller group plans and review those, and check in with Antar frequently because if he has a bad feeling about it, we have to figure out what it could be and if it is too much of a risk to do.”

“Right.” Matt nodded. “Who are we going to start with the interviews?”

“Maybe start with Antar, because then we can let him review the plans first and his opinion on the others will be crucial, may as well get his first.”

“Sounds good Estrella, Matt are you okay with that?”

“Fine by me Bulan, let’s go, I don’t know how much longer we have until lights out, or how much later they’re up after it.”

The trio walked down the hall,  **at least it’s not lights out yet, even if we only get Antar done today, at least it’s something. We won’t even be arriving in the Binario system until later tonight, so everyone is going to be up past lights out anyways. Well, unless we decide to wait it out on the ship until daylight, but it’s not like everyone is going to be in bed at lights out.** Estrella got to the door first, lightly knocking on it before being shoved out of the way by Bulan who banged on the door.

“Damn, do you have to be so rude? It’s not like banging on the door is going to get him to the door any faster, hey Antar can we talk to you?” Antar opened the door as Estrella shoved Bulan in the same manner.

“Sure, I’m assuming this is about your plan?”

“Yeah,” Matt nodded.

“But it’s also about the last mission, and Reltra, and a lot of other things.” Estrella 

“Let’s sit first.”

Antar’s room was set up the same as the others, but there were more small trinkets laid neatly across the nightstand and dresser.  **They’re probably from some of the planets he visited while dropping off prisoners.**

“As of right now, almost every position is a blank space because we need to find out what all of your strengths are.” Bulan pulled up the document.

“I’m sorry to say that as much as this looks interesting, I can’t read Nettuno and this means nothing to me.” **Oh right, everyone’s version is in a different language, real convenient for just trying to show people things.** _I can hear you_. **_I wasn’t even talking to you, how did you even hear me I’m not-_** **oh. When did I put my hand on the table?**

“Right, sorry. I’m assuming you have your language preferences set up, so I’ll send this over to you so you can read it. You’ll also be able to add things right into it and we’ll be able to see it.”

Antar nodded, scanning the document. “I guess I’ll start with what happened on Legna. Getting dropped off was okay, I ended up with the closer room, which was nice because the Galra hadn’t caught on until after I had collected the prisoners. By the time we got to the exit though, we couldn’t wait around for the pods, because the Galra were starting to put up alarms. And the only way down from where we were was to scale the building. That’s where most of the prisoners died. If you’re looking for materials that could be useful, I want rope and hooks if we have any. Also, general armor, because we had to run keep moving once the three of us hit the ground and we were caught in the crossfire of the air battle. But we wouldn’t need any of that if we had communicators to tell the pods when we were ready to leave. Then again, it could be useful to have in general. But we aren’t going to be on an active Galran world for this first mission anyways, so we can worry about that later.” 

“Okay, definitely communicators, rope, hooks, and armor if we can find it. I know that usually, you collect prisoners because you’re Galra, but what do you think you’d be best at on a mission?” Matt spoke while adding the notes to the page.

“Fouvale and I both go back and forth between collecting prisoners and guarding, but either position is probably our best. I was never high up enough in the Galran Empire to run communications, so I know almost nothing about the computers, and I’ve never wanted to be a pilot. As for Reltra, she just saw us as a way to collect prisoners without raising too much alarm.”

 

“And what do you think Reltra’s strength is? We’d ask her, but someone could cause problems if we do go.” Bulan gave a pointed look at Estrella, who grumbled.

“Honestly, I’m can’t say for sure, but I know that she’s decent with flying the pods. She tends to feel the need to be in the center of the action, usually in the control room, but that’s when she was leading the group. If she isn’t leading, she’s probably better off flying one of the pods.”

“Thanks for the input, I think that’s all we have to ask right now.”

As they got out in the hall, Estrella stage whispered, “I will not pilot a pod with Reltra.”

“As of right now, you won’t be able to. For bigger missions we’re going to need as many pods flying around as we can, there won’t be two pilots to a pod. Who’re we seeing next?”

“Maxino, he’d probably know the most about her, well her strengths anyways. Then we’ll visit Fouvale, and then we’ll visit Il Razzo. We already know that Il Razzo is a tech genius, and by then we’ll probably have enough information about Reltra to only have to use them for confirmation.”

They arrived in the Binario system just as they finished talking to Maxino.  **We’ll have to wait to talk to Fouvale, but from what Antar told us he’s good where we have him.**

Around 17:25 (which meant very little to Matt, other than it was getting late in the evening), they arrived at Feaveai, one of the defensive planets that had been preparing for an attack for thousands of years. **It’s a nice planet, just not very Earth-like.**

The planet itself probably wasn't the safest thing to be on, large sections of it were more gaseous than solid, but the civilization was built on fairly stable rock. The architecture looked similar to the Galran buildings, only with more support beams. Many of the buildings were connected.  **So if the solid parts of the planet would collapse maybe everything would just float through space. I bet all the buildings have self-sustaining oxygen supplies.** Not that he’d ever find out because as soon as they got the prisoners to a place to stay and restocked on food, they were leaving again. 

The goodbyes had been short, most of the prisoners didn't have a whole lot of time to bond, and the people who were closest either weren’t being separated or were used to being separated.  **We never found out why Venere and Bulan’s families were close. Not that I would ask Bulan.**

Once everyone who was staying was back on the ship, they took off heading to an unknown location.  **Not like it matters, if all goes well we’re probably going to be heading in a different direction anyways.**

"Where are we going?" Estrella yawned.

"Tempus Praesidium 7," Matt replied with a monotone voice. By this point in the night (or morning?), he could've done this in his sleep.

"What condition is it in?" This was the routine of the night,  **ask a question, respond to the question, ask a question, respond to the question.**

"It's nearly dead, very dangerous, and abandoned by the Galra."

"Why are we going?"

"To data mine the master server and analyze the data to help decide timing of missions and identify plans and planets that we don't know about."

Estrella nodded, "Describe the plan."

"Fly in, send Bulan, Il Razzo, and myself into the base to data mine with Estrella and Reltra guarding in pods, Maxino running the main ship, Fouvale and Antar will be guarding on foot."

"What kind of pods are Reltra and I taking?"

"Armored and armed."  **We've had enough risked lives for this week.**

"Final question,"  **no?** "How are we staying in touch?"

"With the communicators…"  **shit.** " With the communicators that I have to find or create. Why'd you let me forget, that was the biggest flaw of the last mission." Matt frowned.

"I didn't remember until now, sorry. Let's go search the fifth deck until we find some." Estrella laughed.

**Why are the lights out in the hall? It can't be that late can it?** "Estrella, what time is it?"

"Apparently late enough for everyone to be asleep. Too bad we can't run through the halls screaming." **I can't see her, but I feel the sarcasm and the eye roll.**

"Too bad we can't wake up everyone else and make them hate us even more." Matt shot back.

"Too bad we have to let them sleep while we work our asses off to get this mission together." **At least the mission will get together, better than theirs did anyways.**

Matt sighed, "Too bad we just made it to the fifth deck and have to actually work now."

"Yeah, too bad you didn't remember that we didn't have the communicators earlier." Matt scoffed at her response.

"Too bad for you, you forgot too and now you're stuck finding them with me."

"Better get to work so we aren't up all night."

"I don't know if you noticed, but we're probably going to be up all night if we get kafinon when we're done. And we're probably going to be up all night working on this mission anyways."

Long story (and search) short, there's "no fucking communicators on this goddamn ship, but there's an entire room of seeds and paper clips." (Thank you, Estrella, for that beautiful phrasing).

After making four cups of kafinon (two each, three strong, one weaker), and Estrella briefly getting mad at Matt for being able to make his second cup just as strong as the first, they returned to their rooms to break more tables.

**_How can we build eight simple communicators with everyday objects and a single table computer system?_ **

_ I found a step by step guide to building communicators with common things, would you like me to translate that into English for you? _

**_Yeah, thanks._ **

By the time the lights came on in the hall, Estrella was putting the backing on the last communicator.

"Nice, we finished the communicators just in time to eat breakfast. Time to drink my body weight in kafinon." Estrella cheered facetiously.

"Are you saying that because you want to die, or because you need energy?"

"I was going for energy, but both apply to the situation."

"Agreed, but kafinon can't kill me unless I add poison to it. Let's go get some, you can probably have another kind of strong cup by now."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I feel like I ended up sucking the life out of a lot of this. I took out two whole scenes without even writing them and changed up some things because I no longer wanted to write them. Eventually one of them will probably end up somewhere, I already have a better introduction to the scene happening. I didn't even put effort into the title, I didn't edit most of it other than a quick run through on grammarly, I'm surprised I finished it this early to be honest. Hopefully the upcoming chapters won't be as draining as this ended up being, hope you guys enjoyed.  
> I also had to keep going back into earlier chapters and I found so many dumb mistakes (none of which I fixed). I have to remember that I haven't written any of this while fully awake and functional, mostly because I haven't been fully awake and functional since like fourth grade which was five years ago.

**Author's Note:**

> so we have a ton of OC's already and I'm adding more with the rebels I wasn't lying with the OC's galore tag  
> also I have the planets and star systems sketched out on paper as of their location and their status as of freedom, I'm making lists of each OC's basic information including what they look like, where they're from, their heritage, their abilities etc. I think I'll post those as part of this series (that's why I made it a series) so I'll make another fic with character backgrounds and anything else that I end up creating


End file.
